Kittle reveals the moment he realized the 49ers were his NFL home originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area
Nothing is promised in the NFL.
That being said, 49ers tight end George Kittle knows how lucky he is to have spent so many seasons with one Bay team – but he also knows he deserved it. With long-term homes in the league so hard to find, Kittle said recently teammate Deebo Samuel when he realized the 49ers were his.
“My sophomore year, I passed for over 1,300 yards and a bunch of touchdowns, and I thought, ‘Oh, well, if I play like that again, they’re going to reward me for playing the game the right way’, “Kittle said in Samuel’s latest news”Cleats and convos“Podcast. “Because you can do all these things off the field, whatever it is, but everyone watches the tape. That’s all they respect.
“And if you have a good tape and people respect you, someone is going to pay you a lot of money to do it.”
The 49ers selected Kittle in the fifth round (146th overall) of the 2017 NFL Draft, and he went on to catch 43 passes for 515 yards and two touchdowns during his rookie season. His sophomore campaign in 2018 was his breakthrough, when he had 88 receptions for 1,377 yards and five touchdowns.
After Kittle had a nearly identical season in 2019, the 49ers rewarded him in the offseason with a lucrative five-year, $75 million contract extension in August 2020, making him the highest-paid tight end of NFL history at the time.
You could definitely say he was home.
“I’m happy to be here in SF,” Kittle concluded.
Despite uncertainty at quarterback during his first five and a half seasons in the NFL, Kittle now has some consistency under center Brock Purdy, and the two have had a lot of success together. The All-Pro tight end recorded his third 1,000-yard season last year in Purdy’s first full campaign as the 49ers’ starting quarterback, and he leads 49ers in touchdowns this season.
While it remains to be seen what Kittle’s next contract will be — he’s set to become a free agent after the 2025 season — there’s no denying that San Francisco is where the People’s Tight End is supposed to be.
